


Above Us Only Sky

by beckalina



Category: Disney RPF, Jonas Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Gen, Incestuous Undertones, M/M, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-23
Updated: 2010-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-13 08:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckalina/pseuds/beckalina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the early fall of 1969 and while Nick Jonas is well aware of the seemingly never ending war that continues to rage on a world away from him, it’s not something he sees fit to concern himself with. When his brother receives a draft notice and is sent off to fight in Vietnam, Nick’s life is turned upside down. As he waits for Joe’s return, Nick finds that his priorities begin to shift. No longer content to fill his life with sports, dances, and the other trappings of suburban high school life, Nick finds meaning and solace when he joins the always burgeoning protest movement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2010 Jonas Brothers Big Bang.
> 
>  **Additional Warnings** : Mentions of drug use, graphic description of war, discussion of the Kent State shootings, strong anti-Vietnam War sentiment, tertiary character death, and depictions of PTSD.

Nick is sixteen on the day his life changes forever. It’s an otherwise normal September evening, still warm, but with a slight crispness to the air that foreshadows the coming autumn chill. The only things Nick is truly concerned about are his upcoming birthday, whether or not his football team will win this Friday’s game, and if Miley Cyrus is going to ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. There’s a war waging a world away; the reality of that is not something that anyone can escape. Nick watches the news and understands what’s happening, but he never dwells on it. The war in Vietnam exists in his periphery—something important that he should pay attention to, but not his biggest concern.

The moment he walks into the house to find his family crowded around the kitchen table, his brother Joe staring unblinkingly at the piece of paper in his hand, Nick knows that the war will never be confined to his periphery again.

Their mother and father sit on either side of Joe, faces grim and mouths set. No one is speaking, and Nick can see his brother’s hands shaking slightly against the flecked Formica surface of the table. None of them take notice of Nick standing in the doorway.

Joe stares at the draft notice, his head cocked as though he doesn’t understand what the paper actually means. Nick is overwhelmed with a feeling of sudden hatred towards his brother. How could he have been so careless, so stupid? Why couldn’t he have gone to college like their brother Kevin? Why couldn’t he have gone to Canada like his friend Garbo? Joe had been so goddamned stubborn, so convinced that he could avoid the draft by sheer will.

“Nicky,” Joe speaks up, the first to notice that the younger boy is standing stiffly a few feet away. “It’ll be okay, man. They say that it’s going to be over soon, anyway. Bet I don’t even make it out of camp.”

“They’re going to shave all of your hair off,” Nick bites out savagely, ridiculously. He throws his bag to the floor and runs to his bedroom, slamming the door. The tight clench of his jaw loosens and he falls forward onto his bed, tears soaking through the striped cotton pillowcase before he’s even completely aware that he’s crying.

They’ve been lucky, his family. No one they know has been sent to Vietnam, not yet. But he knows a lot of kids from school—kids who are greeted at the front door by men in dress uniform, kids who watch their older brothers come back from the jungle with dark shadows lurking behind their eyes.

There’s a kernel of hate clenching deep in his chest and it hurts almost as much as the idea of losing Joe. For as long as Nick can remember, he and Joe have been viewed as a single unit by their family. They’ve never been apart for more than the length of a school day. He’s entirely convinced—he’s absolutely certain, no matter what happens from this moment—once Joe sets foot in that jungle, Nick will never have his brother again.

He feels Joe enter the room before he hears him. The air shifts when Joe slips through the door and pads across the thick shag. Nick hates the carpet in his room. It’s an off shade of gold that is probably supposed to be reminiscent of mid-August sunshine, but all Nick sees when he looks at it is the sickly color of jaundice. He’s a neat person—to what his brothers have always said is a frightening degree—but he lets his clothes and books clutter the floor like a patchwork, so that he isn’t constantly confronted with the ugliness of his carpet. It feels a little like a victory when Joe stumbles over a book of guitar tabs and curses under his breath.

“Nicky. Nick, seriously. My hair?” Joe laughs, but it’s hollow—there’s none of the easy joy that’s usually prevalent in his voice. He settles down onto the edge of the bed, runs his hand up Nick’s back and buries his fingers in Nick’s loose curls.

“You’ll miss it,” Nick mutters into his pillow, not quite ready to let go of his ridiculous petulance. He turns his head and tilts his eyes up towards Joe, searching his face. “Run away. Canada, Joe. You need to go stay with Garbo and his uncle.”

Joe sighs and shoves Nick towards the edge of the mattress, stretching his body alongside his brother’s. “No, Nick. When I decided to stay here, I knew this might happen. Dad—Dad says God wouldn’t give us more we’re able to handle. And, and. At least I’m not Job, right? No boils or anything?”

“You’re kind of an idiot, Joe.” Nick rolls his eyes and turns on his side, facing Joe. He stares at him so hard that the other boy flinches.

They’re both quiet, and it’s not anything like their usual comfortable silence. Nick wants to scream at Joe, wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him so hard that his teeth rattle. He wants Joe to realize that this is something real. That this is something worthy of more than just their minister father’s empty platitudes. Joe is going to go to the jungle, and he might not come back.

Every night, while Joe is out—probably getting high and listening to the kinds of secular music that their father won’t allow in the house—Nick takes the time to watch the evening news. He has no illusions about what’s going on half a world away and he can’t help but feel like his brother is either hopelessly naïve or criminally stupid. Maybe both.

“I am scared, Nicky,” Joe speaks up after the silence stretches on for what seems like far too long, his voice tight and heavy. “I’m not . . . It isn’t like I don’t understand what this means. I don’t—I don’t want to go, you know that I don’t. You know that I want nothing more than to stay here and annoy the shit out of you and do things that make mom and dad pray for my mortal soul on a daily basis. But my number got called, man. I have to go.”

Nick turns his head away because he knows the tones of Joe’s voice too well. He knows that if he were to look, he would see unshed tears pooling in the corner of Joe’s dark eyes. The paradoxical combination of Joe’s proximity and Nick’s burning anger towards him has calmed Nick down enough that he isn’t actively crying anymore. Regardless of how mad he is right now, he knows that he’ll lose it again if he has to watch his brother cry. They’ve had that effect on each other since the days of tricycles and skinned knees.

They fall back into a long stretch of silence that neither seems willing to break. Nick reaches his hand across the small space between them and takes hold of Joe’s, winding their fingers together. They eventually fall asleep, stretched out side by side on the twin bed that Nick will probably outgrow soon—their hands gripped together tightly like a lifeline.

**

A week after Joe’s orders arrive, Nick turns seventeen. He floats through his day at school, just as he has been floating through every day that has passed since the moment he came home to find his family crowded around the kitchen table. He acknowledges the birthday wishes from his friends and classmates, scribbles down notes on autopilot, eats a bland and forgettable lunch, and hits the bullseye three times during archery training. None of it seems important anymore.

He doesn’t feel any different. When he turned sixteen, he was excited to finally be able to drive and cross that first hurdle into adulthood. The weekend before his birthday last year, Kevin and Joe took him out to the old quarry and gave him a bottle of whiskey that he had known was from his parents’ liquor cabinet. At the time, it seemed more like a present for them than for him—he’d only had one or two swallows while the other two finished off the mostly full bottle. Looking back, he realizes that it was the first time the three of them had been more like friends than just brothers since they were kids. That was his present, whether they meant it to be or not.

The school day seems to end too quickly, the hours passing Nick by without notice. He keeps telling himself that he should enjoy his birthday, tries to quell the insidious voice whispering in the back of his mind that it could be the last he ever spends with his brother. Soldiers come home every single day, relatively unscathed. There’s no reason for Nick to dwell on the possibility that Joe might not eventually be one of them.

His attempts at reassuring himself haven’t stopped the nightmares that wake him up at night, drenched in a cold sweat with his heart in his throat and his brother’s name on his lips. More than once, he’s snuck down the hall to stand in front of Joe’s door, listening to the sounds of the older boy’s sheets rustling as he faces his own sleepless nights.

He steps out into the warm sun and can’t stop the grin the breaks across his face. Joe is waiting at the curb in the bright red El Camino that he bought for a song after the previous owner’s son got in one too many accidents. Nick flings his bag into the back and grabs at the passenger side door, his grin growing wider when he realizes that Joe is sliding across the bench seat, leaving the driver’s side open. Joe rarely lets anyone else touch his baby, let alone drive it.

“The birthday boy gets to drive,” Joe shouts out the open window as Nick jogs around the front of the car.

Nick doesn’t argue. He slips into the driver’s seat and runs his hands over the steering wheel a few times before he shifts the car into gear. The bench seat is marred with cigarette burns, dark grey pockmarks on the smooth white leather. There’s a crack in the back window, just big enough that driving over a pothole makes Nick a little nervous. Joe’s car isn’t anywhere near anything that could be considered good condition—he never would have been able to afford it if it was—but it’s his, and it’s still one of the coolest cars Nick’s ever seen.

“Wait,” Joe says as Nick is about to turn towards their street. “Mom said we didn’t have to be home until dinner. Let’s go cruising.”

“Yeah? Do you want me to pull off so you can drive?”

“No, Nick.” Joe rolls his eyes. “I told you, birthday boy gets to drive.”

“Big Rob’s?” Nick asks, even though he already knows Joe’s answer and maneuvers the car accordingly.

Big Rob’s drive-in has been a favorite hangout of the Jonas boys since Kevin was in high school. It’s one of the spots to see and be seen in town, and it’s always busy. On the weekends, kids pull in line for an open spot and get out of their cars to wait, sitting on rooftops and hoods while carhops skate past with trays full of burgers, fries, and milkshakes so thick that they have to be eaten with a spoon.

It’s not that busy today, but there are quite a few cars pulled in close on either side of the restaurant. Nick finds a space on the far end of the lot and immediately begins to place their order through the crackling speaker. He doesn’t bother asking Joe what he wants, because he knows that his brother is going to ask for a burger with everything and a root beer float with chocolate ice cream. Joe’s had the same exact order since he was thirteen.

“If mom asks, you had a Tab,” Joe proclaims when Nick puts in his own order for a small strawberry milkshake and a hot ham and cheese sandwich.

Nick knows that Joe has always felt responsible for Nick’s health because he was the first to notice that something was wrong with the younger boy, three years that feel like a lifetime ago. Since he can’t get mad at Joe for being concerned, he settles for exasperation. He appreciates it, but he’s a year away from adulthood and he’s learned how to take care of himself—and a milkshake every once in awhile isn’t worthy of the look that Joe is currently giving him.

Nick rolls his eyes. “One small milkshake is not going to kill me, Joseph. Besides, it’s my birthday.”

Joe mimics Nick’s expression, but he doesn’t press the issue any further. A car full of seniors from the high school park alongside them and one of the girls immediately jumps out when she sees Joe. Since his notice came, Joe has mostly stuck close to home and tried to spend as much time with the family—with Nick—as he can before he has to leave. He hasn’t been going out the way he was even a week ago, and it’s a safe bet that he’s been missed.

Nick can’t keep from rolling his eyes again when the girl leans in through the open window, angled just right so that Joe can peek down her shirt if he wants. She completely ignores Nick, which is nothing new—but it bothers him so much more than it usually does. Some of Joe’s friends are cool, like his friend Demi. Some of Joe’s friends are not, and this girl definitely falls into the latter group. He just wants her to go away.

“We’re going to miss you, Joe,” she simpers, twirling a dark lock of hair around her finger. “You should come cruise with us tonight.”

Joe gives her an affable grin. “Nah, sorry Bren. It’s Nick’s birthday today. Family time.”

Joe keeps up a polite conversation for a few minutes, shouting across the divider to the rest of the occupants in the car. He promises to meet up with all of them one more time before he leaves, but he makes it clear that he’s at the drive-in to spend time with Nick and they eventually relent, leaving the brothers to enjoy their afternoon. Warmth blossoms in Nick’s stomach when Joe reaches down and cranks the window all the way up.

“So,” Joe starts after their order is delivered and the carhop skates away, “I’ve been trying to figure out what to give you for your birthday.”

Nick swallows a spoonful of his milkshake and pokes Joe in the arm. “You don’t have to get me anything, man. Unless you want to smuggle me in a few more albums, that’d be groovy.”

Joe sips at his root beer float and swirls the straw around the top of the mug. “I had a better idea, actually. I, um, I think that you should have the car. While I’m gone, I mean.”

Nick almost drops his milkshake and grips it a little too hard to compensate. Cold pink liquid drips down the side of his cup and stains his pants while he stares open mouthed at his brother. He’s having some trouble processing what Joe has just said. This car is Joe’s baby. This car is Joe’s pride and joy. Today is the first day that Nick has even been allowed behind the wheel, and now Joe is telling him that it’s going to be his to use.

“No sense in letting it sit in the driveway, right?” Joe says weakly, clearly not receiving the reaction he had hoped for.

Nick swallows past the lump in his throat and musters a nod. He takes a large drink of his milkshake in order to distract himself from the thoughts that are running like wildfire through his mind. He’ll take care of it for Joe, he thinks, he’ll take care of it and the day that Joe comes back, he’ll hand over the keys. Because Joe is going to come back, and he’s going to want his car when he does.

“That’s great, man. I’ll take good care of it,” he finally says, giving Joe a smile that he’s certain doesn’t quite meet his eyes.

“I know you will. And listen, if something hap—”

“No,” Nick says fiercely, “don’t.”

Their conversation slips back into the mundane, Joe teasing Nick about Miley while the younger boy’s cheeks burn pink and he resorts to complete denial. They sit in the El Camino, taking up a coveted spot for far longer than they probably should. It’s so much like old times that neither of them is willing to break the spell.

As Nick drives them home a little while later, he realizes that he’ll probably always remember his seventeenth birthday as both his best and his worst.

**

The night before Joe is supposed to leave for boot camp, Nick does his best to avoid him. He closes himself up in his room after the dinner he barely eats, quietly strumming the guitar he had been allowed to buy after promising his dad that it would only be used for church services. There’s a Rolling Stones album that Joe borrowed from a friend on the turntable and Nick has the volume at the lowest setting he can hear. He’s been playing along with the record, determined to learn the songs by ear. He throws himself into it as though, somehow, it’s the single most important thing he can do right now.

There’s a knock at his door, which startles him. His parents are the only ones who ever knock and he isn’t in the mood for a lecture about the evils of popular music. He pulls the needle off of the record and slides the album cover underneath the blankets on his bed, switching his hands to play one of the hymns his dad asked him to learn for next Sunday’s service.

“Come in,” he calls, picking out the melody of something that he thinks might have the word “God” in the title. The songs have all started blending together, after awhile.

It’s Joe who steps into the room after swinging the door open, and Nick is surprised. Joe never knocks, because he’s never acknowledged that there are any boundaries between the two of them—because there really aren’t any boundaries between them. He has hair clippers in his hands and he’s worrying his lower lip between his teeth.

“I can’t sit in a barber’s chair and have some asshole with a flat-top chuckle about long haired hippies or something.” Joe laughs humorlessly. “You were right, and it’s stupid—but I don’t want them to cut my hair.”

“You kind of don’t have a choice, Joe.” Nicks rolls his eyes. “They’re going to.”

“Not if I do it first, right? Will—Will you cut it for me? Please, Nicky.”

Nick decides not to argue and sets his guitar down, standing up to follow Joe down the hall to the bathroom. He thinks, wildly, that they should grab the Polaroid, that he should capture this moment for posterity. This might be the last time he sees this Joe—his Joe—shaggy waves hanging in his eyes and brushing against his shoulders. It’s been so long since Nick has seen his brother without long hair. For a moment he irrationally believes that cutting it will be like cutting the hair of Samson, only instead of strength, Joe will lose his personality.

He swallows thickly and tells Joe to sit on the toilet seat while he plugs the clippers into the wall socket above the gold speckled sink. He sets them on the edge of the sink and takes handfuls of his brother’s hair, twisting the strands around his fingers. It’s thick and soft against his skin. Joe started stealing their mom’s crème rinse when he was fifteen and his hair began to creep past his ears. He insisted that it would tangle otherwise, blithely ignoring their dad’s suggestion to prevent such a thing with regular haircuts.

“Are you sure about this, Joe?” Nick is surprised at the strain in his own voice as he winds a small piece of Joe’s hair around his index finger and tugs slightly.

“I want you to do it for me, not a stranger. Please.” Joe is practically begging, a rawness bubbling just below the surface.

Nick nods and untangles his hands from Joe’s thick hair. “Scissors first, then.”

He takes the scissors from the medicine cabinet and goes to work, holding large sections of Joe’s hair in his hands and slicing the scissors through them. The pieces fall limply to the floor, standing out against the gold and white tile. Joe flinches each time he hears the scissors close against his hair, and Nick pauses to study his face. The older boy has his eyes clenched tightly, mouth screwed up in a grimace. Nick feels like he’s torturing Joe and wants to throw the scissors across the room. He hates the idea that he’s causing Joe even an ounce of misery.

Nick tries to be strong and remind himself that he shouldn’t stop until this is done, until Joe’s hair is gone. But his hands are starting to shake so much that he worries he might cut into Joe’s scalp, slice off a piece of his ear—so he sets the scissors down next the electric clippers and sits on the edge of the bathtub, exhaling a shaky breath into his hands.

Nick feels ridiculous, because this is much harder than it should be. It’s just supposed to be a simple haircut, but he can’t shake the feeling that something momentous is occurring. He hates Joe a little for asking this of him, but not as much as he hates himself for not being able to complete so simple a task.

The silence in the bathroom is heavy, as every silence between the two brothers has been since the day Joe’s notice was delivered. Every moment over the past few weeks has carried a weight that seemed to scream finality. Friday was the last football game with Joe cheering so loudly from the stands that Nick could hear him on the field. Sunday was the last time they attended services and sang together in the choir. Only an hour ago, they ate their last family meal together, their mom filling the table with Joe’s favorites while she blinked away tears.

Nick shakes his head to bring himself back and stands up. He has to finish this now, or he might never. He realizes that Joe has been silently watching him, and allows a small smile before he picks up the scissors and returns to the task at hand. He has to laugh, a little, at how silly Joe’s hair looks right now. There are sections of it that still brush the shoulders of his loudly patterned shirt, sections that hang just below his ears, sections that stick straight out from his scalp. Nick opens the drawer under the sink in search of his mom’s hand mirror and hands it to his brother.

The sputtering noises Joe makes when he sees his reflection send Nick into the first laughing fit he’s had since Joe’s number came up—not even a month ago, yet it feels as though it’s been years. Joe scowls at him, but there’s no anger behind it. Though Nick tries to school his face into a neutral expression, he fails and sags against the sink, his shoulders shaking with laughter. Eventually, Joe joins him and the two of them lean into each other, blinking widely and wiping tears from the corners of their eyes. The moment of levity feels like a reprieve.

This is nice, Nick thinks suddenly, this is something that he’s going to remember fondly, when Joe is gone. It’s that thought that sobers him, and his laughter dies off. He pulls away from his brother and focuses his attention on the cool ceramic tile beneath their feet. For some reason, he can’t bring himself to look at Joe right now. He feels a little like he won’t be able to control himself, though he isn’t even fully aware of what impulse he needs to control.

Joe catches Nick’s hands and holds them tightly in his own to draw the younger boy’s attention, staring up at Nick through a fringe of thick lashes and jagged bangs. There’s a light in his eyes that Nick doesn’t quite recognize, and it’s strange because he’s spent his life cataloging every facet of his brother—there shouldn’t be any part of Joe that Nick doesn’t know as intimately as he knows himself. He feels his face grow hot under the intensity of Joe’s stare and yanks his hands back, busying himself with the scissors.

“I should finish this,” he says. His hands are shaking again and he wills them to stop.

“I don’t know, Nicky.” Joe picks up the hand mirror and studies his reflection, moving his head back and forth. “I think it could be the newest style. We could call it the ‘lawnmower.’”

It feels like there are thousands of things that Nick could say, but none of them seem quite right. He settles on a quiet, “Good one, Joe.”

It takes Nick another ten minutes and two breaks to finish with the scissors. He sets them down and eyes the clippers, but he isn’t quite ready for this to be done. Instead, he ruffles his fingers through Joe’s newly shorn hair and wishes that he didn’t have to shave it all off. It isn’t the best haircut, of course, but Nick isn’t certain that he’s ever seen Joe look quite like this before. He likes it. It brings the older boy’s features into sharper focus, and Nick is struck with the sudden thought that, for the first time, he’s really seeing his brother.

Nick breathes deeply, once, twice, then tears his gaze away from his brother’s face and reluctantly pulls his hand from Joe’s hair. The buzz of the clippers is loud in the small room when Nick switches them on. He swallows thickly and holds them in his right hand, his left cupping the back of Joe’s head in an effort to hold them both steady. Nick’s heart clenches as each slide of the clippers reveals Joe’s scalp, pale and bristly.

“I’m done,” he whispers a few minutes later, dusting his hands against his thighs. They watch each other awkwardly for a moment, the air crackling between them.

“Can I see?” Joe reaches for the hand mirror and brings it up to his face. He looks so vulnerable, so raw and open as he studies his reflection again—bare scalp and dark smudges underneath his eyes. Nick can’t help but reach for Joe, pulling him tightly against his chest and resting his chin on the top of his brother’s head.

“I’m sorry, Joe. I’m so sorry.” Tears prickle in Nick’s eyes and he doesn’t bother to stop them, the tears fall freely down his face. He can feel Joe crying softly against him, soaking circles into Nick’s plain white t-shirt.

**

Nick loses his fight to accompany Joe and their parents to the train station the next morning. His mom wakes him early—smiling sadly when she sees Joe curled on the other side of the small bed—and tells him that his dad is waiting to drive him to school. He tries to convince both of them that he needs to be there, needs to watch the train carry his brother away. There isn’t any room for argument, though. His dad insists that school has to come first, and they drive to the campus in stony silence.

Honor thy mother and father, he was taught from a young age, and don’t question them. When Nick was younger, he always felt that his often blind obedience to his parents was necessary to temper Joe’s wanton disregard for their rules. If he was good, he believed, mom and dad wouldn’t be so harsh on Joe when he came home at too late an hour, with a lazy smile and the earthy scent of smoke clinging to his jacket. As he’s gotten older, Nick’s blind obedience has been replaced with a more reluctant one, but he’s never fully questioned anything that he’s been told to do. Until now.

“I’m taking the day off,” his dad says as the car pulls in front of the school. “I’ll pick you up after practice.”

Nick jerks his head in acknowledgment and gets out of the car, fighting the urge to slam the door behind him. He’s trying to be mature about this, even though all he wants to do is stomp his feet and pound his fists against the roof the car until his dad relents and lets him come with them to the train station. As angry as he is, he knows that Joe’s orders are taking their toll on the whole family. So he’ll obey and he’ll go into the building and he’ll try his best to pay attention in his classes.

A few people eye him curiously as he walks into the building. Joe was popular at this school, made friends in the same effortless way he did everything else, and the news of his pending deployment spread quickly. Nick knows that no one expects him to be here today, and he’s already considering leaving as soon as he’s sure the station wagon is out of sight. There’s no way he’s going to be able to sit through his classes and even pretend to concentrate. He’s never skipped school a day in his life—that’s more Joe’s style—but suddenly it sounds like the best idea he’s ever had.

His dad must be reading his mind, though, because the car is still parked in front of the school and the older man is watching the building. He’s too far away for Nick to be able to read the expression on his face, but Nick knows that the car won’t be pulling away until his dad watches him walk in. That’s fine, Nick will wait it out. As soon as he sets foot inside the doorway, he turns and watches his dad pull away. Nick lifts his arm in a sardonic sort of wave and heads towards the locker area. The idea of walking out is pulling at him, but so is his ridiculous sense of duty.

Nick makes it to his locker and just stands in front of it, shifting his bag from hand to hand. He should open it, put his things away, and head to homeroom. He knows this. He also knows that his mind is going to be on that train with his brother. He knows that he’s going to spend the day under the scrutiny of his teachers and classmates, suffering their sympathetic smiles. He knows that everyone is going to treat him like he’s fragile, the way they did when he was first diagnosed with diabetes and so skinny that Joe would threaten to hold him down and force feed him.

Nick hates sympathy, he hates pity, he hates when people try to imagine what he must be thinking and assume what he must want from them. There’s also a thought kicking around the back of Nick’s mind, that no one will treat him any differently today; that they won’t recognize how monumental it is for him at all. He honestly isn’t sure which option he thinks is worse.

He’s lost in his own thoughts, a common place for him to be these days, when a slim arm slips around his shoulders and the woodsy scent of patchouli tickles his nose. He glances over and quirks the corner of his mouth at his companion, lets her pull him into a hug. Demi is probably going to be the one thing that will get him through today. Nick feels vaguely guilty; he’s been so wrapped up in the idea of Joe being sent to Vietnam, he’s been ignoring the fact that he isn’t the only one Joe is leaving behind.

“We’re ditching,” Demi whispers throatily, her warm breath tickling the shell of his ear. “Neither of us want to be here today.”

Of course, Nick reminds himself, he isn’t the only one that is feeling the effects of Joe being drafted. It’s easy to forget that sometimes—feels too much like he and his brother exist on their own plane of existence, apart from their family and the rest of the world. But Demi and Joe are friends, too. Sometimes Nick thinks that there might be more to it than that, but he’s never had the nerve to ask either of them. An unidentifiable ache always flares up inside of him whenever he considers it, so he tries not to think too deeply about what kind of relationship the two share.

Nick grips Demi tightly and tips his head into her shoulder. “You’re right,” he murmurs into the buttery leather of her fringed vest, taking comfort in her familiar warmth. “I can’t be here.”

They slip out of the school through a forgotten door nestled between the locker area and the gym. Nick feels a twinge of guilt when he turns to look back at the building, but Demi’s already several steps ahead of him and she’s not looking back. He follows her across the parking lot, ducks behind her through the broken fence that separates the campus from the residential neighborhood around it. Demi is moving with a purpose, and Nick follows her, deciding to give in to pure impulse for once in his short life.

There’s an old park a few blocks away from the school, rickety slides and broken teeter-totters and swings hanging from rust coated links. Demi settles onto the hard wooden seat of one of the swings and wraps her hands around the chains, pushing herself lazily back and forth. Nick takes the one next to her, and the two teens sit in silence, both pretending to be absorbed in the flock of birds flying overhead.

“It’s bad, over there, isn’t it?” Demi speaks up, her voice thin.

“They say it’s getting better. Joe might not even make it out of camp.” Nick knew it was a lie when Joe said it, and it’s just as much of one now.

“Right.” Demi nods. “He said the same thing. I didn’t believe him, either.”

Their conversation ends there, the only sounds the creaking of the old swings and the distant roar of cars passing over the road that parallels the far end of the park. There’s so much Nick wants to say, so many things he wants to ask her. He wonders what Joe told her before he left, wonders if Joe made any of the same promises to Demi that he made to Nick. He doesn’t ask, just reaches out to wrap his hand around hers on the chain of her swing.

**

Miley asks Nick to the Sadie Hawkins dance a few days after Joe leaves, nervousness evident in her husky drawl. Nick almost wants to laugh because this thing he’d wanted so much to happen suddenly means nothing to him. She watches him with wide, hopeful eyes, her lower lip caught between her teeth. He can’t bring himself to turn her down.

He spends most of the dance sitting at a corner table with Demi and a few kids who have brothers in the war, discussing the most recent news and what it could possibly mean for their siblings. At first, Miley sits next to him and follows the conversation, but when she realizes that Nick doesn’t intend to dance with her at all, she leaves the table and he doesn’t see her for the rest of the night. It occurs to him, later, that turning Miley down to begin with would have probably less cruel.

Nick throws himself into a routine after the dance. He gets up every morning and goes to school, takes diligent notes in all of his classes and smiles tightly when people ask him about his brother. Football season winds down and they win their last two games, but for Nick it’s a shallow victory because Joe isn’t there to share it with him.

He spends his evenings doing homework and watching the news, growing agitated when the local anchors spend too much time on inconsequential stories. Don’t they know that no one cares about the local elementary school’s bake sale? Don’t they know that nothing else matters, so long as men are dying every single day in a country Nick is beginning to think they shouldn’t even be in to begin with?

Sometimes Nick feels so incredibly selfish. It’s not as though he’d been uninformed before, not as though he’d had no idea about what was going on. And he had cared, certainly—in that distant way that most Americans did, shaking their heads as they flipped through the morning paper or turned the dial on the television. But he had trusted his government, trusted when they said that the American presence in Vietnam was necessary. It wasn’t until the war began to directly affect him that he truly began to pay real attention to what was going on.

He tries to talk to his parents about it, but he never gets very far. His mother gets so upset when he brings up Joe and the possibilities of what could happen to him that Nick stops trying to discuss it with her after only a few weeks. His father shuts down any attempt at conversation with reminders about church services and readings, tangents about God’s plan and righteousness prevailing over evil.

Nick talks to Kevin a lot, Kevin who was smart enough to go to college in Ohio and avoid the draft. Every once in awhile, Nick still feels the anger at Joe for not doing the same thing, clenching his jaw and tightening his grip on the pencil he uses to scribble down the song lyrics that constantly run through his head. He knows, though, that it isn’t really Joe he’s angry with. He’s angry with the army, he’s angry with the government, he’s angry with the damn president himself—because they took Joe away from him. He tells Kevin how he feels during one of their phone calls.

“Nick, isn’t that a little . . . I don’t know, that just doesn’t sound right.” Kevin’s voice is tinny through the receiver in Nick’s hand.

“You aren’t mad that our brother could die in the damn jungle for no good reason?”

“Don’t pull that kind of shit with me, Nicholas. You know better. I just mean that your reaction is, um. Nick, to be honest, you kind of sound like—Look, Nick, you know I love both. I know how close the two of you are . . .”

Nick rolls his eyes even though Kevin can’t see the gesture. “Whatever, Kev. Nevermind. Let’s talk about something else. Are you coming home for Thanksgiving?”

The conversation shifts to plans for the upcoming holiday and Nick tries not to think of how different the day will be without Joe. For as long as he can remember, Thanksgiving afternoons have been for playing football with his brothers. Joe and Kevin team up against Nick because he’s arguably the best player and always insists that it’s the only way for the game to be played fairly. Those good intentions usually last for about half of the game, which tends to end with the boys rolling around in the grass and shoving each other into piles of dead leaves.

Last year’s game ended after Joe tackled Nick to the ground and started rubbing blades of grass into his curls. The memory warms Nick and he smiles to himself as he remembers the way Joe’s entire face lit up with laughter, his eyes bright and cheeks pink from the crisp air. The sound of Kevin clearing his throat breaks Nick from his reverie and he makes a noncommittal sound into the receiver. Kevin sighs and Nick can tell that his oldest brother is trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

“I need to go, Nick. I’ll see you in a few weeks. Try not to worry yourself too much, okay?”

They both know it’s a lie when Nick promises Kevin that he won’t.

**

There’s a letter sitting on the table when Nick gets home from school one afternoon, addressed to him in Joe’s messy script. He finds that he can barely breathe as he tears open the envelope and his eyes scan over the short letter three times before he even sets his school bag down. There isn’t a lot that Joe is allowed to say, but he describes what boot camp is like, mentions a few of the guys he’s met and already become friendly with. It seems as though, just as in the rest of his life, Joe is charming everyone around him.

He can feel the fear in the thin paper, Joe’s handwriting slightly shakier than he remembers it being. He imagines that Joe is putting on a brave face in hopes that it will convince Nick not to worry, but he should know well enough to know that such a thing isn’t possible. There’s a joking tone to the letter—Nick traces his thumb over Joe’s scrawled, “You wood make a grate drill sargint!”—and Nick wonders whose concerns Joe is truly attempting to allay; his own, or Nick’s.

Nick sits down at the table and digs through his bag for a pen and paper. At the end of his letter, Joe made it clear that he expected Nick to write to him, and promised that the letters would be able to reach him regardless of where he was. He hadn’t been able to tell Nick when he would be officially shipped out, but it can’t be very much longer.

It takes him awhile to figure out what he wants to say. He tries to express how much he misses Joe and worries for him, but nothing he scribbles down sounds right, so he crumples the paper and starts over. He tells Joe about the Sadie Hawkins dance and the fact that Miley won’t even smile at him in the halls anymore. He writes about school, how he and Demi are getting closer—“Have you written to her, too? You should man, she would love it.”—and the protest the two of them are going to try to go to in New York. He adds in some gentle ribbing about Joe’s spelling skills and wraps up the letter with the simple words, “Be safe.”

As Nick seals the letter into an envelope and carefully prints Joe’s name and numbers on the crisp white paper, it occurs to him that even though he rambled on for over two pages—he didn’t actually say anything that he really wanted to.

**

Nick is skipping school for the second time in less than a month. He drives the El Camino past the high school and fights back the urge to slouch down in his seat. Logically, there’s no way anyone can see him from the building, but he can’t help but feel a sort of guilty fear that he will be caught. In a flash, he sees his future—arrested for truancy, no one to bail him out because his dad will insist he needs to be taught a lesson, his arguably bright future slipping down the drain.

The campus disappears from the rearview mirror and he lets out the breath he’s been holding for half a mile. He isn’t going to get caught, and if he does, he’ll pretend that he feels sick. No one ever questions him because so many of his usual symptoms don’t present outwardly. It’s not something that he ever thought he would take advantage of, but today is a special case—and he’s willing to pull out all the stops.

Demi is waiting for him when he pulls up to her house, sitting on the curb with her large corduroy bag in her lap. She jumps up when she sees the car coming and is pulling open the passenger door before Nick even slows to a complete stop.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this!” There’s a nervous excitement in her voice as Nick merges onto NJ-208 in the direction of Manhattan. “Do you think we’ll get in trouble?”

“Can’t say I really care.” Nick shrugs. “This feels more important than school.”

When Nick was younger and the family would go into the city for the day, the drive always seemed to take forever. He would insist, from the wide backseat of the family station wagon, that they should get a hotel for the night because he believed that it would take too long for them to get home. Now he’s driving into the city by himself for the first time in his life and he can’t believe how quick the drive really is. Just over an hour after leaving New Jersey, they’re walking through Central Park and following the growing crowd towards Sheep Meadow.

They’d found out about the Vietnam moratorium demonstration through a classmate, who had an older sister that was friends with one of the organizers. It took no more than the length of their lunch period for Nick and Demi to decide that they wanted to be a part of it. As they enter the Meadow, they join what Nick thinks must be over a thousand people. He sees people of all ages and races, children as young as two or three and adults that must be older than his Nana. Some are already on the ground, sitting and lying all over the Meadow. Others form a line that snakes through the crowd, and Nick and Demi take their place at the end of it.

Some of the people are chanting as they wait in line. The refrain of, “One, two, three, four! We don’t want your fucking war!” floats through the crowd, the voices rising and falling together. When they reach the front of the line, Nick and Demi are each handed two balloons on a string. The black one, a girl not much older than them explains, represents someone who had been killed in Vietnam since Nixon took office, while the white balloon represents someone who will die if the fighting continues. Nick accepts his balloons and holds them off to the side, the lump in his throat growing each time he catches sight of the white one out of the corner of his eye.

Nick and Demi pick their way through the crowds of people on the ground, stepping over and around the prone figures. They find a clear spot and settle down, surrounded on all sides by other protesters. As they wait for the cue to release their balloons, they talk to the people around them.

To Nick’s left is a woman whose son was killed in action four years ago, when notifications were still delivered by taxi cab. She tells them, in a voice thick with emotion, that she’s devoted her life to ending the war ever since the day she opened her door and saw the bright yellow car sitting in her driveway. To Demi’s right is a man a year or two older than Joe who has spent the past year dodging the draft and hitchhiking around the country, attending every protest he can while trying to stay one step ahead of the military police.

All around them, more and more people begin to share their stories. Everyone has a reason, something that pushed them into protesting. A Quaker with Conscientious Objector status attended his first protest the day he received his draft notice; an elderly woman feels that she’s spent her entire life under the oppressive shadow of war and doesn’t want her grandchildren to face the same fate; a young mother has her two small children with her so that they can see the power of free speech firsthand. There’s always an impetus, Nick realizes, and Joe is his.

Nick shares his reasons with his new acquaintances—he tells them that Joe’s deployment has pulled the wool from his eyes and that he’s starting to feel as if he’s truly seeing the world for the first time. A man with a movie camera overhears him and asks Nick if he would be willing to repeat his story for a documentary, but Nick declines. It’s one thing, he thinks, to share his story with those that were so willing to share with him, but the idea of repeating it on camera feels like an exploitation.

The call goes out and the crowd falls silent as each person releases their balloons. Nick lets go of the string in his hand and watches the white and black balloons twist together as they rise into the sky. All afternoon, he’s resisted the urge to attach Joe’s name to the white balloon, but he can’t help but wonder if he’s just released an early memorial to his brother. He stares straight up from his prone position on the ground, the sky above him dotted with hundreds of white and black balloons floating skyward. It’s sobering to see, to realize that each of those balloons represents a life gone too soon.

Nick vows to do everything that he can to support the moratorium and try to bring an end to the war. It isn’t just about wanting to bring his brother home; it’s about wanting to bring all of the brothers, sons, and fathers home. It’s about not wanting another person to ever have to open their front door to two men in uniforms and a folded flag. He glances over at Demi and slips his hand in hers, both of them giving each other a reassuring squeeze and a small smile before they turn their attention back to the sky. He’s only one person but he’s not alone, and he can’t help but feel like they might be able to make a difference.


	2. Chapter 2

Part Two

Sometime in March, it occurs to Nick that he’s started thinking of his life in terms of “before Joe left” and “after Joe left.” Before Joe left, Nick didn’t really hang out with anyone other than his brother or his fellow athletes. Friday nights were generally spent going out for burgers and shakes with his teammates from football or baseball. Sundays and weeknights were for homework—Nick would sit at his desk with his books open, just waiting for Joe to come home and distract him.

It’s different now that Joe’s gone. Nick is different, now. For one thing, he’s not going out for burgers and shakes after baseball games, because he’s not playing this season. He decided early that he wouldn’t be able to put the same amount of dedication into his game as he had in the previous years, and he refused to do that to himself or to the team.

Instead, Nick has thrown himself into working to end the war in Vietnam. There are days when Nick feels like it isn’t possible, that their voices will never be loud enough, that their collective resolve is somehow too weak. But what started out as a selfish desire to end the war just to bring his brother back has morphed into the most important thing in Nick’s life. On the days he actually attends all of his classes, he spends his evenings with Demi and their friends, always planning the next protest, always trying to find something new that will somehow make a difference.

School is still important, and Nick is smart enough to know that his parents would pay much more attention to the things he does in his free time if he didn’t make an effort to maintain his perfect average. It’s something that he’s concerned with, as well, but it doesn’t seem quite as dire as it once did. He still turns in his work and he still makes the grades, but there are things that are more pressing to him now. He has letters to write to his congressmen and senators, protests to attend, and sit-ins to organize.

Nick catches himself acting more like Joe sometimes, taking risks he wouldn’t have taken a few months ago, making decisions much more suited for the carefree personality that his brother has always personified. It both scares and exhilarates him. He never imagined that he would someday want to be more like his brother, but the differences that he’s begun to see in his personality have given him a new view of himself and the world. It’s as if he’s taken on the best parts of Joe’s personality while discarding the worst of his own.

He and Demi have become so much closer than he ever imagined that they would. For as much time as Joe and Nick spent together, they also moved in separate social spheres. From time to time before Joe left, Nick would hang out with Demi and some of Joe’s other friends, but for the most part Nick socialized with his fellow athletes while Joe spent his time with the kind of people that their father referred to as “burnouts and bums.”

They’ve come together, Nick thinks, because no one else really understands what it’s like for them. Arguably the two people closest to Joe out of his large group of friends, neither of them quite knew what to do with themselves when he left. They’ve clung to each other, in a way, building a real friendship out of their shared misery. There are others that move in and out of their day-to-day lives, friends and classmates and acquaintances who they laugh with, protest with, gossip with—but Nick feels like it’s just him and Demi against the world, sometimes.

**

“Let’s do something fun tonight.” Demi leans against the locker next to Nick’s while he shoves a few notebooks into his bag. At some point during the weekend, he’s going to need to get a lot of work done. His Civics grade is slipping into B territory, and he can’t let that happen.

“Cruising?” It’s not exactly what he wants to do, but she has a point. Maybe they need a break.

“Hm.” She tilts her head and purses her lips. “Nah. I don’t want to deal with other people. Something different?”

Nick thinks for a moment and then breaks into a wide grin. He knows the perfect place for them to go. He tells Demi that he’ll pick her up around seven and to dress for the weather.

When he pulls into her driveway later in the evening, Demi runs out with her bag in her hand and a grin on her face. She starts asking him where they’re going when he merges onto the highway, but his only response is to smile and tell her that she’ll find out when they get there. As they draw closer to Teterboro, Nick’s can’t stop the excited smile from spreading across his face. How could he have forgotten how much he loved this?

Nick parks the El Camino in an empty field near the airport and spreads a blanket out in the back. Demi hops over the edge and settles herself down, reaching into her pocket for the joint she’d rolled on the drive over. It was a bit distracting, the way she managed not to drop a single grain of marijuana, even as he drove across gravel and grass to get to this spot.

When Nick and his brothers were kids, their dad would bring them out here to watch the planes take off, pointing out the different airlines and asking the boys where they thought the planes might be going. But that was a long time ago, when he was still just a traveling minister with a day job, a fascination with airplanes, and time to spend with his sons.

Right now though, Nick just wants to relax and watch the planes fly off in all directions above him—maybe take a few hits off of Demi’s joint. He’s not really much of a smoker, he never has been. Joe was the one who did that kind of thing, Joe was the one who would sprinkle patchouli oil on his clothes before he left for a night out, convinced that the scent would mask whatever he smoked or drank. It didn’t, not really, but since Nick was the only one still awake on those nights, he never told Joe otherwise. His brother was just so proud of himself for his imagined subterfuge, Nick never saw a reason to bring him down.

He even started to like the aroma of patchouli, something he’s reminded of as a breeze blows across Demi and carries the scent to his nose. For a moment, it’s almost as if it’s Joe that’s here with him, instead.

The distant roar of a plane engine brings Nick to the present and he leans back on his elbows, head tilted towards the sky. This is the perfect time to watch the planes take off, light enough that he can see the company insignias, but dark enough that the lights shine brightly in the night.

“Where do you think that one is going?” Demi’s voice is loud over the sound of the engines, her eyes bright in the quick flare of the match.

“It’s a Pan-Am, so it could be going anywhere. They fly all over the world.” Nick has visions of the passengers, dressed in their Sunday best, settling back into their seats for a long flight. “A plane that big, it has to be going pretty far.”

“Mm,” Demi murmurs, holding the joint towards him. “Have you ever been on a plane?”

“Nah.” He pauses to take a hit from the joint and passes it back. “My dad used to bring us out here when we were kids. We would make up stories about where the planes were going, and Joe and I would eventually end up trying to make each other laugh with ridiculous accents while Kevin and dad talked about plane models.”

“That sounds fun.” There’s a wistful note to her tone, but it’s gone so quickly that Nick assumes he imagined it. “Maybe that one is going to . . . England.”

They pass the joint back and forth, smoking it slowly as planes take off in all directions above them. For each plane, they make up a story, detailing the imagined lives of the occupants. They both try different accents, getting more and more ridiculous as they go—Nick’s Scottish brogue makes Demi break out into peals of laughter. Neither of them acknowledges the reality that at least one of those planes could be carrying passengers eventually bound for the jungles of Vietnam—at least not out loud.

The few hits from the joint leave Nick feeling pleasant, his lips curving into a lazy smile as the planes roar overhead. It’s the calmest he’s felt in months. He and Demi lapse into a comfortable silence, the slow in and out of their breathing filling the quiet between flyovers. The sky is getting darker, the inky indigo dotted with stars. The air chills in pace with the darkening sky and Nick lifts his arm so that Demi can curl against him to ward off the cool night.

He turns his head and Demi is so close that it makes his breath catch in his throat. Her eyes are dark beneath her long lashes and she just smells so good and he can’t keep his gaze from dropping to her lips. It’s not something he’s ever even considered, but right now he can’t think of anything that he wants more.

The first press of their lips is tentative, just the barest brush before they both pull away. Neither of them move for a beat, but their hesitance doesn’t last long. The second kiss is longer, deeper—Demi’s bottom lip soft between Nick’s. They shift around in the bed of the car, hands in each others’ hair. Nick concentrates on the slick of Demi’s tongue against his, the soft sounds she makes against his throat, the musky scent of patchouli when he noses behind her ear. He focuses on the moment so that he won’t think about how this feels like a betrayal somehow—Joe’s face flashes behind Nick’s closed eyes and he has to fight the sudden wave of guilt that washes over him.

Demi pulls back first, her hand flying to her mouth. Her eyes are wide and she stares at Nick like she’s seeing him for the first time. Neither speak as they move apart and smooth out their clothing. Nick feels slightly sick to his stomach, while Demi looks away and digs a cigarette out of the crushed pack in her vest pocket. Nick watches her out of the corner of his eye as she lights it and takes a few deep drags.

“I’ve had a crush on your brother since I was twelve, did you know that?” She says after a long stretch of silence.

“. . . I had an idea.” Nick hedges.

“All that time we spent together, nothing ever happened between us.” Her voice is strong, but her eyes are wide and a little wet as she tilts her head up to look at the stars. “I kept thinking that it was me, but then I realized that he didn’t really go steady with any girls. Remember Taylor? I really thought she might be the one to break his streak, but they didn’t even last a month.”

Nick thinks about what she’s saying. Joe has always been the type of person that somehow manages to be loved by everyone. He’s warm and open, charismatic and charming. Joe tends to be the center of everything, surrounded by people—many of them pretty girls constantly vying for his attention. But Demi is right; all through high school and in the few years since graduation, Joe’s never gone steady with a girl. Nick knows that his brother dates around, and he knows that Joe isn’t exactly lonely in any aspect, but it’s never really occurred to him that Joe’s never had a girlfriend.

“Joe loves you, Demi. You have to know that. I do, too. Just.”

“I know,” she sighs. “Not like that. Don’t take this the wrong way, Nick, but I don’t have those feelings for you, either.”

“Still, um, friends?” He chances, biting at the corner of his bottom lip. It’s at the point where he honestly doesn’t know what he would do without her and he’ll never forgive himself if he’s done something to screw it up.

“The best.” The smile on Demi’s face is warm and genuine, and he does his best to return it.

Nick reaches out and pulls her close, resting his chin on her shoulder. He feels like there’s more that he should say, but the words won’t come. He sighs into her hair, the scent of patchouli oil tickling his nose as another plane flies overhead.

**

Nick starts to help his mom with the care packages that she sends out to Joe every two weeks. They spend Saturday afternoons carefully packing up boxes of cookies and brownies that barely have time to cool. In his letters, Joe reassures Nick that even though the baked goods often arrive in pieces, they’re the highlight of his day. Nick doesn’t know what Joe says in his letters to their parents, and he pretends not to notice the tears that shine in the corner of his mom’s eyes as she stirs the thick batter for the brownies that were always Joe’s favorites.

It’s during these Saturday afternoons that Nick learns how to bake under the patient guidance of his mother. After his first few disastrous attempts, she makes him sit down and study the recipes, comparing the process to the chemistry classes that Nick has never had a problem acing. It takes him longer than he would like, but eventually he’s sifting flour and carefully measuring ingredients into his mom’s cobalt blue mixing bowl without her standing over his shoulder.

He feels an immense sense of pride when he pulls his first successful batch of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven, though he can’t help but think that there’s still room for improvement when he takes his first experimental bite. The brownies are harder, because he convinces himself that they have to be perfect. He goes through three or four batches before he’s satisfied, and even then he still thinks that they aren’t as good as they could be.

Joe’s letters also mention that a few of his buddies enjoy the care packages just as much as he does because they don’t have anyone at home to send them their own. Nick doesn’t even really think about it; he doubles, triples, and eventually quadruples the amount of baked goods that he and his mom send out. Even though he hasn’t seen his brother’s smile in over six months, it’s as clear as day in his mind—and he likes the idea that his efforts might bring a smile to someone else’s face, too.

By the end of those afternoons, he’s tired and covered in smudges of flour and cocoa, but it doesn’t really bother him. Sometimes it gets difficult to attend protest after protest and fight for the same damn thing every time. Sometimes it feels as if nothing he does can truly make a difference. But it’s the little things like this, wrapping chocolate chip cookies and double fudge brownies in wax paper and nestling them in a small cardboard box, that remind Nick that even the smallest gesture can be monumental to someone.

**

The first Monday in May is a gorgeous spring day. Nick walks out of the school in the afternoon with his coat flung over his arm, his face turned up towards the sun. He basks in the warmth as he heads out to the parking lot and pulls open the door to the El Camino. He still refuses to refer to the car as his own, and he’s quick to correct anyone who does—it’s Joe’s car, Nick is just its temporary caretaker.

As he shifts the car into drive, he thinks about the conversation he’d had with Kevin the day before. Things are heating up at Kent State, and his brother is worried. Kevin’s strongly against the war in Vietnam and, Nick is somewhat ashamed to admit, has been for much longer than his younger brother. During their conversation, he’d voiced concern about some of the tactics that other protesters were resorting to, following the invasion of Cambodia. There had been genuine fear in Kevin’s voice as he described the scent of the burning ROTC building permeating throughout the grounds, accompanied with over a thousand protesters cheering its destruction.

Nick understands the kind of anger that can lead to something like that, and the riots that nearly destroyed downtown Kent early Saturday morning. He understands that kind of anger because he’s lived with it every single day for six months. But he knows that rioting and committing arson won’t bring Joe home, won’t bring any of them home. There are better means of protest.

Over the weekend, he’d been at a sit-in at Rutgers, where hundreds of people silently protested the invasion, lighting candles for the fallen as the sky grew dark. As much as Nick wants to yell and scream and make people notice him, make them care—he knows in his heart that they’re much more likely to garner the support of people on the fringe if they stay within the confines of the law. A quiet protest might be looked upon more kindly than the type that usually show up on the news, and sometimes he thinks that they need all of the help they can get.

Nick is surprised when he pulls up to the house and sees his father’s car in the driveway. He immediately starts to wonder why the car would be at the house so early in the afternoon. His dad usually doesn’t get home until evening, walking in the door just in time to sit down to dinner. To his knowledge, the man has never even taken a sick day. The day Joe left is the only time Nick can ever remember his father not going into work at all.

He’s stepping out of the car when a thought hits him and his knees nearly give out. What if it’s Joe? What if Joe was killed and his parents are sitting in the living room, waiting for Nick to come home? His steps falter and his feet suddenly feel as though they’re made of lead. There’s a part of him that thinks he would know if something had happened to Joe, that he would be able to feel it. They’re just so close, it doesn’t seem possible to Nick that something could happen to his brother without him being able to sense it somehow. There aren’t many other options that come to mind, and he’s inexplicably terrified.

He wills himself up the front walk, a pit of dread growing deep in his stomach. He can count on one hand the amount of times his father has come home early from work. If it’s Joe, if it’s Joe—he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He doesn’t know how he’s going to survive it. With his hand twisting the doorknob, Nick tries to swallow around the lump in his throat. As he steps into the foyer, he can hear murmurs coming from the family room, and the unmistakable sound of his mom crying. He’s running before he even realizes, feet pounding against the carpet.

His parents are sitting on the couch, his mom clutching a handkerchief and dabbing at the corner of her eyes. His dad is next to her, his hand tight on her shoulder. Nick opens his mouth to speak but can’t find any words, a dry sob the only thing he can manage.

“Oh, Nicholas, baby. Thank God you’re home!” She exclaims, jumping up to wrap him in a tight hug.

“J-Joe?” He manages, blinking against the burn in his eyes. He buries his face against his mother’s curls like he’s a five year old with a skinned knee.

“No, honey, no. It’s—It’s Kevin’s school.”

Nick doesn’t understand at first, he can’t make sense of what his parents are saying. They tell him that there was a shooting at Kent State and that he shouldn’t worry because Kevin is okay, but Nick can see immediately that it’s so much more than that. Bit by bit, the story comes out. Four students are dead, felled by bullets fired from the rifles of the Ohio National Guard, and nine more are injured. It’s so unbelievable that Nick just keeps asking questions, even though it’s clear that his parents don’t have the answers.

“We want you to stay home for awhile, Nick.” His mom rubs soft circles on his back as he slumps forward and tries to take it all in. “No more protests.”

He sits straight up at that, an argument on the tip of his tongue. “But—”

“No arguments, son. Your mother is right. We’ve let it slide long enough.” His dad stands up and walks down the hall to his study, signaling that the conversation is over as far as he is concerned.

“I’m sorry, baby, I know how important it is to you, but I need you to be here. I’m already worried sick about Joe, and—and now with Kevin,” her voice breaks a little as she reaches out and brushes a stray curl off of his forehead. “I can’t be constantly afraid that you’re going to be in harm’s way, too.”

Nick bites his lip and fights back all of the words he wants to say that she won’t want to hear. “Okay, mama,” he finally says, pasting on a reassuring smile, “I’ll stay home.”

Much later in the night, Nick waits impatiently to talk to Kevin, hovering in the kitchen while their mom twists the cord in her fingers and insists that Kevin should be on the next bus home. Once Nick gets the receiver in his hand, the tone of Kevin’s voice is so unlike anything Nick has ever heard before. Kevin explains that he was in class during most of the protest, and he’d just left the building when he heard the shots ring out. He doesn’t know anyone that was hurt, but his voice shakes when he tells Nick how very easily he could have been there. He keeps repeating that he really is okay, but Nick has a hard time believing it when the fear in his brother’s voice is so strong.

“They were ready to launch a full out attack,” Kevin whispers incredulously, as if he doesn’t quite believe it himself. “Against soldiers with guns. This is, fuck, Nick. Professors were begging people to leave out of fear of escalation. This campus could’ve have become a war zone. I can’t—I don’t know how to tell you what it’s like here. Nothing I say can make it make sense . . . It doesn’t make sense, Nick.”

“Are you coming home?” It’s the only thing Nick can think to ask, and even as he does, he knows the answer.

“I have to stay here. I can’t leave now.” Kevin exhales loudly. “Dad understands, I think. Mom isn’t . . . She’s so worried, Nick. I’ve never heard her like this.”

Nick explains to Kevin that he won’t be leaving the house except to go to school because their mom is so afraid that something terrible is going to happen to him. He knows that she begged Kevin to come home, heard her hold back sobs as she told her oldest son that his life was more important than any protest could be. He imagines that, like himself, it was all Kevin could do not to tell her that she was wrong.

**

Nick has long since stopped feeling guilty about skipping school. He does what he can to keep his grades where they should be, but he truly feels that what he does instead of going to class is far more important than learning about who invented the cotton gin. Sneaking out of his parents’ house just as the sky is beginning to lighten is different, though. In his mind’s eye, he can see the expression of worry and fear on his mom’s face when she wakes up to find him gone. He doubts that the note he left behind will do much to assuage her fears, but he needs to be in DC.

Demi’s friend Sterling is waiting down the street in his van, and Nick is met with several grave faces when he slides open the door to climb in. The group is reserved as they drive out of New Jersey. Nick shares every piece of information that Kevin has been able to give him, describing the fear in his brother’s voice as having been so palpable that it made Nick’s skin prickle. Someone else mentions that their cousin at NYU helped hang a banner reading “They can’t kill us all!” during the protests at that school, and the van grows quiet.

He won’t pretend that there isn’t a ribbon of fear pumping in time with his heartbeat, the events of Kent State still so fresh in everyone’s minds. There’s no telling what will happen today, but Nixon needs to understand that the movement is as strong and determined as it was before the tragedy. They will not be deterred, they will continue to do everything they can to bring every single soldier home from Vietnam.

There are people everywhere when the van pulls into Washington DC a few hours later. They can hear the chanting through the open windows, thousands of voices raised in protest. They find a place to park and make a pact to stay together at all costs—there’s no telling what could happen today.

The first thing that really strikes Nick, as the group walks towards the protest surrounding the Lincoln Memorial, is the noise. The shouting voices, the honking horns—the unmistakable sound of breaking glass. He can’t pretend that it doesn’t scare him a little. He glances over at Demi, walking next to him with wide eyes and a slight tremble to her lips. When he takes her hand, he tells himself that it’s because she’s the one who needs the reassurance.

They’re all but lifted into the throng as they move through the streets. People press in on Nick from all sides, and he keeps a firm grip on Demi’s hand like an anchor. As they near the Memorial, they can just barely make out people with megaphones standing on the steps, directing the crowd of thousands in chants and songs. Nick can hardly believe what he’s seeing. There are so many people here, so many more than any protest he’s ever even seen on television.

Throughout the afternoon, they stand and listen to speeches from students, veterans—people who have been directly and indirectly affected by the war. As the day progresses, they gradually lose their voices from cheering and chanting as loudly as they can. Nick feels energized, alive in a way that he never knew was possible before this became his life. It doesn’t matter that Nixon was spirited away after a fruitless attempt to quell the protests early in the morning. It doesn’t matter that Nick is likely to lose all of his remaining privileges once he finally makes it home tonight. The only thing that matters is that the movement is still strong and cannot be coerced. They are not afraid, and they will not stop until they finally reach their goal. Nick can only hope that it will happen sooner rather than later.

**

There are hints in Joe’s most recent letter that suggest he might be part of a troop pullout. Nick can barely contain his excitement at the thought that Joe could be home much sooner than anyone had expected. He’s adapted well, he thinks, to life without his brother. But just the idea that Joe could be home within one month instead of four makes Nick wonder how he ever thought he could handle a full year without him.

For the entirety of Joe’s deployment, Nick has tip-toed past his brother’s closed bedroom door. He knows that their mom goes in every once in awhile to dust so that it will look nice once Joe finally makes it home, but Nick hasn’t been able to bring himself to even look inside. Knowing that Joe could be home soon changes his mind, and his hand is twisting the doorknob before he can decide that it’s a bad idea. He swings the door open and steps into the room.

Whereas the carpet in Nick’s room is reminiscent of jaundice, Joe’s reminds him of a blossoming bruise—deep bluish purple. Unlike Nick, Joe loves the color of his carpet. Nick toes at the nap of the plush shag; it looks like his mom recently vacuumed. It’s odd to see Joe’s room so put together. Nick is much more accustomed to his brother’s room being a chaotic mess. There isn’t anything on the floor, no piles of dirty and clean clothes heaped on the bed—which has been made for the first time in years. Everything is neat and tidy and Nick suddenly can’t wait for Joe to come home and mess it all up again.

He takes a tentative step into the room and inhales deeply. It’s faint, but he can still detect just the barest hint of patchouli coming from the jacket hanging on the closet door. He walks further into the room and reaches for the coat, his hands sliding across the soft brown suede. He closes his eyes as he’s flooded with memories of Joe wearing this jacket, the bright slash of Joe’s grin so vivid in his mind that it dances in front of his eyes when he opens them a moment later.

Nick’s eyes slide over to the dresser, where the bright purple wax in Joe’s lava lamp sits in a solid blob against the base. He remembers when Joe bought the lamp, ignoring their father’s mutterings about his son being a dirty hippie as he proudly plugged it in and turned it on. He would come home late at night sometimes, eyes bloodshot and clothes reeking as he dragged Nick into his room and waxed poetic about the random beauty of the viscous shapes moving through the clear liquid. Nick flips it on and sits down on the bed while the lamp warms up, pretending that he can still smell his brother on the freshly laundered sheets.

**

Joe is officially scheduled to return home at the beginning of June and the passing of the days suddenly comes to a grinding halt. Every second stretches out impossibly, every tick of the clock loud in the silence of Nick’s bedroom. He tries to fill his time with anything he can, but nothing seems to make it go faster—the anticipation of finally seeing his brother again drags out the hours until Joe’s homecoming is the only think that Nick can concentrate on.

He makes a thick circle around Joe’s arrival date on the calendar next to his desk and stares at it every day, resisting the urge to mark off the days as they pass. He makes it clear to his parents that he will be going to the train station to pick Joe up. He refuses to let his father take this away from him like he let him take away the chance at a proper goodbye.

He doesn’t always know what his parents talk about behind closed doors, but he does know that the past nine months have shown them just how much Joe’s absence has changed him. His dad makes a token protest about not wanting to overwhelm Joe right away, but it takes no more than a shared glance between his parents for the argument to be forgotten.

He spends the night before trying to convince Demi to come to the station with them, but she just smiles a little sadly and tells him that it should only be family. No matter how many times he tries to convince her that she has become just that, she only shakes her head and tells him that the three of them will have plenty of time to hang out together once Joe is settled.

He’s too keyed up to sleep and he spends most of the night tossing and turning in his bed. He doesn’t understand why there’s an edge of nervousness to his excitement. In less than twelve hours, Joe is going to be home and the fears he’s had for the past nine months, the nightmares that woke him up in the middle of the night with Joe’s name on his lips—it’s all moot now.

In the morning, the car ride to the station consists mostly of Nick’s mom worrying that Joe is going to be too skinny despite the care packages they sent him twice a month, and his dad making non-committal noises in between complaining about the traffic. The train station is busy, crowds of people waiting to pick up loved ones or waiting for their trains. They stop by the ticket booth and check to see if Joe’s train has arrived. As soon as Nick knows that it’s in the station, he quickly turns and begins to scan the crowd.

Nick sees Joe step onto the train platform and all coherent thought flees his mind. The only thing that’s there is a litany of Joe’s name. He doesn’t wait for his brother to turn and see that the family is waiting for him by the ticket booth, instead taking off at full speed and nearly knocking Joe off of his feet. He wraps his arms around the older boy and tries to remember to breathe.

“I missed you, man. I missed you so fucking much,” he mutters against Joe’s hair. He’s made himself pretend that the letters were enough, but it’s so clear to him now. They weren’t. Not even close.

“I missed you, too, Nicky,” Joe says after a beat, relaxing into Nick’s embrace. There’s a thickness in his voice, an inflection that Nick can’t quite identify.

Their parents catch up with them as Joe pulls away and shoulders his duffel. Nick takes a step back to study his brother while their mom fusses over him and their dad stands back and nods in greeting. Joe is deeply tanned, the darkest that Nick has ever seen him. Five o’clock shadow is dark along the curve of his jaw and his hair is longer than Nick expected, brushing the tops of his ears. There are shadows of red dirt underneath his fingernails and in the bends of his knuckles. He’s lost some weight, but not so much that the casual observer would be able to notice. Mostly, he just looks tired, dark circles underneath dull eyes.

The ride home is quiet, Joe responding to his parents’ questions with one word answers and barely sparing a glance towards Nick. He reminds himself that Joe’s had a long day, a longer past few months, and he’s bound to be trying to adjust to being back on US soil, on top of being undoubtedly exhausted—there’s no reason that Nick should feel this hurt. Joe closes his eyes and tilts his head against the window, asleep within minutes. The car falls silent for the duration of the ride because none of them want to disturb him.

**

During his first few days home, Joe literally does nothing but sleep. Their mom wakes him up every few hours, waving freshly made baked goods in his doorway and insisting that he sit up just long enough to eat a handful of cookies and drink the glass of milk that sits sweating on his bedside table. Joe sighs every time, but he does as he’s asked, Adam’s apple bobbing as he downs the milk and remarks how much he’d missed real milk while he was gone. He never says “Vietnam” or “War.” He refers to himself as being “Gone” or “Away” as though he just returned from a short vacation.

Nick spends most of his time sitting in the hallway outside Joe’s door. He watches his brother swipe his hand across his mouth and fall back against his pillows, muttering thank yous as their mom slips out of the room and closes the door behind her. She never seems surprised to find Nick sitting with his back against the wall, and her only response is to smile reassuringly while promising Nick that Joe just needs some time to readjust and then everything will be back to the way it was before he left.

He falls into fitful stretches of sleep, his elbows resting on his bent knees. He usually wakes up to find his shoulders covered by one of the afghans that his mom crocheted to keep herself busy during Joe’s deployment. Eventually, he makes his way into his own bedroom, where he lays awake and strains his ears for any signs of Joe stirring down the hall.

On the fourth day, Nick blearily makes his way downstairs for breakfast, and he’s so surprised to find Joe at the table that he stumbles down the last few steps. The table is piled with steaming dishes and the scent of percolating coffee permeates the room. It’s the first family breakfast that they’ve had in recent memory and Nick’s heart leaps when he sees the sunny smile on Joe’s face as he bites into a strip of bacon.

“Nicky!” Joe shouts. “You’re up! Come have breakfast, I was just telling mom and dad about KP!”

As Nick sits down and reaches across the table for a scoop of scrambled eggs, his eyes stay on Joe. The older boy is telling an animated story about working in the kitchen during boot camp, punctuating his punchlines with a wave of his fork. Nick smiles as bits of egg fly all over the table.

He catches his mom’s eye across the table and she nods at him as if to say, “See? He just needed time.”

It doesn’t matter that the light in Joe’s smile isn’t reaching his eyes quite yet—everything is going to work out just fine. Nick just needs to wait it out, and he’ll have his brother back again.

**

The visits from Joe’s friends start with Demi, whom Joe thanks for “keeping Nick sane” with a grin and a tight hug. She and Nick share a small smile and settle in to listen to Joe tell a story about his first trip into Saigon. He describes the city so vividly that Nick can picture it in his mind; the restaurants serving steaming bowls of homemade noodles accented with fresh vegetables and fragrant herbs, the children running down the street with handfuls of balloons for sale, the bicycles and pedi-cabs fighting for space amongst the cars on the busy city streets.

Joe blushes a little as he tells them about the go-go dancers in the night clubs, their fringed bikinis and the way their long dark hair shone underneath the lights. The night clubs were popular, he explains, the servicemen spending long hours drinking bottles of bitter rice beer and smoking the unfiltered cigarettes that they bought at the market down the street. Sometimes, Joe says, they would almost forget why they were there, lost in the moment until they stumbled outside and watched the military trucks roll past. Joe pauses for a moment, a shadow passing over his face before he launches into another story.

As more people find out that Joe is home, there’s a steady stream of visitors. Nick hangs back for most of them, trying to tell himself that he’s not hovering. Joe shakes hands and cracks jokes with everyone who comes by, but deflects any invitations to go cruising or go swimming in the quarry or any of the other things that he would have jumped at the chance to do a year ago. He just smiles and yawns in an exaggerated way, telling his friends that he’s still adjusting to being back home and that he’ll call them in a few weeks to make plans.

Being on the outside of the conversation allows for Nick to truly study his brother, and he starts to notice cracks in Joe’s cheerful and lax exterior—the way that his eyes are a little too bright, his smiles a little too wide. He tells his stories with an exaggerated sense of humor, as if they’re designed to make everyone around him laugh and completely forget the setting—designed to keep questions to a minimum.

“Hey,” Nick starts one night once a group of Joe’s friends have left after unsuccessfully trying to convince him to join them for milkshakes at Big Rob’s, “You doing okay?”

Joe studies him for a minute before getting up to turn the television on. “I’m good, Nicky. Just tired. Been a long day, a lot of people came by.”

It’s a lie, and deep down Nick knows it—but he can’t find the words to express this to his brother. Instead, he moves over so that Joe can sit next to him on the couch and pretends that Petticoat Junction is the most fascinating show he’s ever watched.

**

It soon becomes a nightly ritual for Nick to head up to his room after dinner and be asleep by eight or nine. He wakes up late in the night, holding his breath and listening for the sounds of movement from Joe’s room. After he started watching Joe closer, Nick realized that Joe wasn’t sleeping at night—the dark circles underneath his brother’s eyes more than evidence enough.

Nick sits on his bed during those early morning hours, his hands roaming over the strings of his guitar. He plucks out quiet melodies while he listens to his brother move throughout the house. Every night, he waits for Joe to barge in, waits for him to knock, anything that will make Nick feel like Joe still needs him just as much as he still needs Joe. Every night he hears Joe quietly walk down the stairs and out the back door. Nick tries not to admit to himself that it stings that Joe hasn’t really sought him out since he’s been home.

A full month of those nights passes before Nick finally ignores his instincts and decides to find out where his brother goes when he thinks everyone else is asleep. He nervously waits to hear the sounds of Joe stirring in his bedroom down the hall. He worries that he’s going to be intruding, violating the little privacy that Joe has. Regardless, Nick isn’t far behind when Joe slips outside.

The El Camino is still parked at the curb in front of the house, so Joe can’t have gone very far. Nick grabs the keys from the holder near the door and takes off. Knowing that Joe is on foot limits the places that Nick has to look, and he takes his time carefully cruising the neighborhood, his eyes scanning every shadow in hopes that one of them is hiding his brother. Once he hits the high school, he’s struck with an idea of where Joe might be and parks the car in the lot.

It takes a few minutes, but Nick finally finds his brother in the park near the high school. Joe is sitting on one of the swings with a bottle in his hand, his head tilted back to look at the stars. Nick stands at a distance as Joe brings the bottle to his lips and takes a long swallow. A car backfires a few blocks away and Joe flinches visibly, his eyes wide in the moonlight.

Nick feels what he can only think is his heart shattering in his chest. He’s known that Joe wasn’t okay, he’s known that whatever his brother had seen or done in the jungle had changed him. It’s been obvious since the day that Joe stepped off of that train, obvious in his stilted interactions with everyone around him. It’s why he’s barely been able to look Joe fully in the eyes since the other boy came home—he hasn’t been able to handle the hollowness that’s taken over the eyes that used to shine so brightly with life and easy joy.

The younger boy falters, crunching a small pile of dead leaves beneath his foot. Joe jumps up from the swing at the sound, bottle clutched in his hand like a weapon. His eyes are wild as he scans the tree line and Nick can just barely make out the slight twitching of Joe’s right index finger, the movement pulling at an invisible trigger.

The remnants of Nick’s heart clench in his chest and he fights against the rise of bile in the back of his throat. Everyone has been acting like Joe is just fine, like the absence of physical scars means that he came back unharmed. Nick knows that Joe has been going through the motions, that everything about Joe’s behavior has been off in some way. Joe may have been able to convince everyone else that he was alright, but Nick knows him too well. Joe can’t hide anything from Nick. Neither one of them has ever been very good at hiding things from the other.

“Joe,” he calls quietly across the park, “It’s me.”

The breath that Joe lets out is audible, even across the distance between them. He sags back down onto the swing as Nick walks towards him. The younger boy settles onto the swing next to his brother, accepting the bottle that Joe passes to him. The first tiny sip he allows himself burns its way down his chest and settles warm in his stomach. He takes a second sip and hands it back.

The brothers sit together in silence, passing Joe’s bottle back and forth. Nick pretends not to notice that Joe is drinking twice as much as he is. Suddenly, he remembers an urgently whispered conversation he’d heard between his parents—something about the already meager contents of the liquor cabinet disappearing. It had been such a common occurrence before Joe was drafted that Nick hadn’t even thought about it. Joe spent most of his years in high school stealing nips from the cabinet that was usually only stocked for company. The difference now is that no one is reprimanding him for it.

“Do you, um,” Nick hesitates, unsure of what he even wants to ask, “Is this . . . Do you do this a lot?”

Joe shrugs and tips his bottle up, the last of the alcohol trickling into his open mouth. He swallows and licks his lips, blunt fingernails scraping at the bottle’s label. “I don’t know, man. Sometimes I just want a drink.”

Their conversation stalls there because Nick has no idea what to say. It occurs to him that they haven’t spent much time alone lately. In the time that Joe’s been back, there’s usually someone else with them; family, Demi, other friends. Nick doesn’t understand why he never noticed it before. He somehow feels like he still knows Joe better than anyone else possibly could, yet he’s beginning to wonder if he has any idea who this man sitting next to him really is.

This isn’t his Joe, he realizes, not entirely. His Joe is still there somewhere, underneath the few days’ worth of stubble and the haze of cheap gin and the haunted shadow in his eyes. He’s still there, but he’s changed, too. Nick has spent so much time waiting for Joe to be himself again, waiting for sly grins and bright eyes—he never actually let himself consider that the Joe who came home might never again be the one who left. The realization hits Nick hard, tears in his eyes and the sharp taste of bile rising again.

“Joe? What—What was it really like over there?”

He regrets the words as soon as they leave his lips. Everyone has been careful to talk about Vietnam in generalities, and only in reference to the little information that Joe seems willing to share. They ask Joe about his R&Rs in Saigon, they ask him if it really rained as much as television made it seem, they ask him for funny little anecdotes about the men he fought beside. No one ever asks him, point blank, what his life was truly like during the time he spent as a soldier.

Joe is quiet for a moment, rolling the empty bottle back and forth between his hands. Nick watches him nervously, afraid that he’s crossed a line that he’ll never be able to uncross. He desperately wishes he could take back his question. If Joe wanted to talk about it, surely he would have already come to Nick. That he didn’t is part of the reason that Nick wanted so badly to know. It was so selfish of him to ask, so inconsiderate.

“Remember my buddy David? The one I met in Basic?” Joe finally speaks up, his eyes trained on the ground beneath their feet.

“Yeah, you used to talk about him in your letters.”

“He died, over there.” A strangled sound escapes from Joe’s mouth, falling between a sob and a humorless laugh. “I guess a lot of my buddies died, right? But David. I don’t know. He was—It was different, Nick.”

“Joe . . .” Nick starts, but Joe continues as though he hadn’t spoken.

“David was telling me about his girl, showed me pictures of this hot little chick and he was—Fuck, Nicky, it’s so weird that this is what I remember, but he was eating a can of peaches. Cut it open with his knife and sliced his finger. And he was—He was sucking the blood out of the cut, trying not to get any on her picture and, and I heard it, before. Before it hit him. I heard the bullet whistle through the air and I couldn’t even move.”

“Joe.” Nick reaches out and puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about this.”

“After,” Joe starts again, ignoring Nick’s protest, “Everything sort of moved in slow motion. David was on the ground before I could so much as make a sound. I screamed for the medic but everything was chaos and we were firing and Charlie was firing and David was just laying there, choking—He was choking on his own fucking blood and I tried to put my hand on the wound and it just wouldn’t stop bleeding.”

Nick imagines the scene—he can see the panic and horror etched deep on his brother’s face as clearly as if he had witnessed it himself. In his mind’s eye, he sees Joe screaming for help, sees the blood covering his hands as he tries in vain to save the life of the man who had been his friend since their first day in boot camp. He knows without asking that Joe has thought of how easily it could’ve been himself there on the ground, how something as simple as a gust of wind could have made it all different. Right now, it’s all that Nick can think about.

“I’m so sorry, Joe,” is all he can manage to whisper.

Joe reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, flipping through it before taking out a worn photograph. He breathes deeply in and out as he stares at the object in his hand. “This is the picture. After the medic took David—David’s body away, it was just. There, on the ground. I couldn’t leave it.”

“Oh,” Nick breathes, staring at the dark smudges of dirt still marring the features of the beautiful young woman in a white sundress. Joe’s been carrying around this reminder of what was probably one of the worst days of his life, and Nick had no idea. He wonders how much time Joe has spent staring at the picture.

“He just kept saying her name, over and over. I still hear it, sometimes, when I close my eyes, ‘Selena, Selena, Selena.’” Joe lets out a shaky breath. “David knew, I could see it in his eyes. He knew he wasn’t going to make it. I kept telling him to hold on for her, that he would get to see her again. I kept saying that the medic was almost there. I don’t think he heard me. I’m not sure if he even saw me . . . I think he just saw her.”

Nick is overwhelmed with a confusing mix of sadness, gratitude, and guilt. Sadness for the girl in the picture, who probably opened her front door one morning with her heart in her throat the moment she saw the men standing on her porch. Gratitude that he never had to experience that, something he had spent so many months fearing, because the one that he loved made it home. Guilt because, God help him, he’s so glad that a simple twist of fate kept his brother alive, even though it meant that someone else died.

He’s spent so much of his time trying not to let himself imagine what his life would be like if Joe had never come home, and suddenly it’s all he can think about. He sees himself opening the door to the men in uniform, sinking to his knees in disbelief. He envisions a world devoid of joy, every facet of his life listless and gray—without Joe’s presence, the color would slowly bleach out of Nick’s life. A life without Joe is the worst thing that Nick can possibly imagine.

Nick thinks about what life was like while Joe was gone, the way that he spent each day waiting for Joe to come—the way he tried his damnedest not to contemplate any other alternative. When he wasn’t trying to convince people that the war in Vietnam was unjust and unfounded, he was telling them about Joe. All of the protests he went to, he was protesting because of Joe, because of the fire his love for his brother had ignited deep within him. Even what happened between himself and Demi was about both of them trying to find a way to be closer to Joe. Joe is—Joe always has been—the most important thing in Nick’s life.

Nick chances a look at Joe, and his brother is staring off somewhere into the distance, the expression on his face unreadable. Nick finds himself remembering the way he felt when Joe came home, like his heart would crash right out of his chest with sheer joy. He thinks about all of the time he’s spent trying to get underneath Joe’s skin, trying to figure out what was beneath the façade of normalcy.

“I’m glad that you’re home,” he finally says. It doesn’t even come close to expressing everything in his mind and his heart—but it’s the truest, simplest, most genuine thing that he can say. It earns him the first real smile he’s seen from Joe in a long time.

Almost conversationally, Joe looks down at the picture still held in his hand and whispers, “I’m not okay, Nick.”

Nick takes a shaky breath and reaches out for Joe’s open palm, pressing his own tight against it. He truly believes it with all of his heart when he says, “You will be.”

The End


End file.
